


the dark swallow

by marcaskane (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Classical Music RPF
Genre: F/M, I was stunned to discover no one had written fic for this pairing, can't wait for this to get 0 views, so I had to because that is my MO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24053419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/marcaskane
Summary: Clara’s fingers knew Johannes’s F-sharp MinorCapriccioas well as they knew any of her own compositions.
Relationships: Johannes Brahms/Clara Schumann
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	the dark swallow

**Author's Note:**

> This semester I learned that Clara once got mad at Brahms for reusing motivic material from a piece that he gave her as a present, but he was using it to tell her that he was up in his feelings about their relationship.
> 
> How could I _not_ make a fic about that?

Clara’s fingers knew Johannes’s F-sharp Minor _Capriccio_ as well as they knew any of her own compositions. They knew the complexity of the twists and turns—complex because Johannes never went easy on her, seemed to even delight in the knowledge that he was giving her something difficult.

Seemed to delight in the knowledge that she’d spent all of that time at the piano learning his music, his notes.

And oh, she had pored over that _Capriccio_. Not for performance, but purely because it was theirs. She hid herself away from the children, and she played it when she missed him.

She missed him often.

\--

Julius came to her with _Alte Liebe_ and _Unüberwindlich_ and told her that Johannes had instructed him to sing them to her.

It felt awkward and familiar under her fingers, all at once, and she knew. Julius sang about an old love, a sad love, a bitter love, and she knew.

“He said that I was the best person to hear these?” she asked, once they had finished. Her voice trembled just slightly.

When Julius nodded, Clara flexed her fingers and flipped through the pages of _Alte Liebe_ again. Her _Capriccio_ was there, all over it.

She wrote about it that day, in her diary—Julius coming and singing with her, sharing Johannes’s newest songs. She couldn’t decide what to say about the _Capriccio_ , about what she knew Johannes must have meant when he called her the songs’ ideal listener, so she said little at all.

\--

Nearly the first hour of Johannes’s visit was disrupted by Clara’s grandsons. The boys were eager to make friends with the visitor; they knew from their aunts and uncles that he had been a friend of their mother, but they had never met him before her death.

Only when Eugenie arrived home did Clara manage to distract them, with encouragement to help their aunt sort the new books she’d picked up for their schooling.

Clara brought him to the study, which she rarely used, save to store her and Robert’s manuscripts. It had been years since Johannes had been in that room, but as she closed the door behind them, she saw how he softened. How at home he was.

She told herself it wasn’t because he was with her.

“You never said,” he said at once, settling into a chair by the window. “What you thought of those songs I sent over with Julius.”

“Didn’t I?” she asked as she went to join him.

“Clara…”

Her stomach turned at the sound of her name, coming from his lips. God, how she’d missed him.

“Are you going to publish them?” she asked, instead of answering him.

“I was planning on it.” Johannes spoke as though she should have predicted this, and perhaps she should have.

She settled her hands in her lap, knotting her fingers together to conceal how much they were shaking. “I’m a little hurt, that you’re publishing so much of my _Capriccio_. Or at least, I thought it was meant to be mine.”

Johannes gazed out the window – pointedly away from her, it seemed – and his eyes were sad. “Of course. It will always be yours.”

That shouldn’t have meant anything. But as it was…

He looked back to her, and they were both born anew.

“I do believe I was your ideal listener for those songs,” she told him. And she was talking about the _Capriccio_ , she was talking about everything he told her through those song texts. But she was talking about something else, too, something ineffable.

But Johannes knew.


End file.
